Public wireless service providers are now facing the maturation of their traditional public service markets as well as increased competition due to the additional market entrants in the Personal Communications System ("PCS") frequency bands. To counter these growth-diminishing trends, wireless service providers are now looking to grow their businesses by extending their coverage into buildings, to extend and enhance their public system coverage and to provide premium private system services to business and institutional customers.
Current market estimates indicate as much as 35% of the future market for radio base stations may be related to in-building services. The types of premium services being considered include rate discounts based on location for business and high density public service areas, and wireless business services which provide wireless extensions to wired office systems for workers who need to be both mobile and accessible. Wireless service providers are motivated to extend their coverage into buildings to better serve their public users and to grow the potential market of private users.
Expansion of the public system coverage area with improved call quality and reliability can result in increased system usage and revenues. Areas that may be targeted for extended public system coverage include airports, subways, shopping malls, convention centers, sports and entertainment complexes, government facilities and other public institutions. Ideally, the service provided in these public in-building areas should be identical to and transparent with a subscriber's public system service (with the exception that rate discounts based on location may be offered to some subscribers).
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a wireless office architecture, and method of operation thereof, that extends the services of a private wired PBX to a wireless terminal that operates both onsite and anywhere in a service providers' public coverage area.